Long Term Effects of Minimum Legal Drinking Age Laws on Adult Alcohol Use and Driving Fatalities

Robert Kaestner () and Benjamin Yarnoff

No 15439, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We examine whether adult alcohol consumption and traffic fatalities are associated with the legal drinking environment when a person was between the ages of 18 and 20. We find that moving from an environment in which a person was never allowed to drink legally to one in which a person could always drink legally was associated with a 20 to 30 percent increase in alcohol consumption and a ten percent increase in fatal accidents for adult males. There were no statistically significant or practically important associations between the legal drinking environment when young and adult female alcohol consumption and driving fatalities.

JEL-codes: I12 I18 K32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
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Date: 2009-10
Note: HE
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